California jobless claims fall, remain at brutal levels

Jobless claims filed by California workers dropped slightly last week, but the statewide totals for unemployment claims still account for a jaw- dropping one out of every five filed in the United States, a report released Thursday shows.

An estimated 160,000 California workers filed initial claims for unemployment benefits last week, which was down 8,700 from the prior week, the U.S. Labor Department reported.

Jobless claims in the United States totaled 787,000 during the week that ended on Jan. 2, a small decrease from the 790,000 initial unemployment claims that were filed the prior week, according to the Labor Department release on Thursday.

Despite the improvement, California’s jobless claims represent 20.3% of the jobless claims filed in the nation last week, this news organization’s analysis of the federal report determined.

California’s brutally high share of the nationwide unemployment claims is an ominous re

minder of the coronavirus-spawned economic toll that has battered workers in the state for 10 dreary months.

Workers in California are losing their jobs in record numbers, partly as a result of wide-ranging shutdowns ordered by state and local government agencies that are scrambling to halt the spread of the deadly bug.

Even worse, the state Employment Development Department has halted payments for 1.4 million unemployment claims because the agency is concerned the accounts are linked to fraudulent activity.

Complicating matters for California workers: The EDD has faltered in its efforts to break up a logjam of legitimate claims that are stuck in the EDD’s bureaucratic backlog.

For several weeks, the backlog shrank during October and into early November. But from Nov. 18 through Dec. 30, the unemployment claims backlog in California increased for six of those seven weeks, including the three most recent weeks.

“EDD’s ability to continue to decrease the backlog will depend on a

reduction in the level of new claims, which is keeping the backlog high,” said Michael Bernick, an employment attorney with law firm Duane Morris and a former EDD director.

The unemployment claims backlog in California was as low as 542,000 as of Nov. 11.

However, as of Dec. 30, the bottleneck was at 777,800 — an increase of 44% from the lows that were briefly achieved in early November, an analysis of the EDD dashboards shows.

A full probe into the EDD is required, urged state Sen. Jim Nielsen, a Republican who represents parts of Northern California, and a harsh critic of the state agency.

“There needs to be an independent audit of the internal procedures that have caused this chaos,” Nielsen said.

Oscar Williamson, a theater stagehand who lives in the Los Angeles County city of San Dimas, has received unemployment payments on a regular basis, due to the seasonal nature of his work. He filed unemployment claims on a recurring basis, with the same identity that had previously been vetted and approved by the EDD.

At the end of December, Williamson was stunned to discover that the EDD had halted his payments of $450 a week without explanation. He

was only told that his payment was pending.

“This is really bad to be without the EDD payments,” Williamson said. “It came at the end of the month, right after Christmas. This came out of the blue.”

It was only through hearing accounts that the EDD had suspended payments for 1.4 million claims that he was able to deduce that his claim payments were suspended due to fraud concerns on the EDD’s part.

“It’s always one thing after another with the EDD, it’s excuse after excuse,” Williamson said.

Williamson blames the EDD failures on key California officials such as Gov. Gavin Newsom and state Labor Secretary Julie Su. The only management change of note at the EDD was the retirement, effective Dec. 31, of its director, long-time EDD veteran Sharon Hilliard.

“We’re dealing with things that have been going on for a long time,” Williamson said. “Newsom and Su have known about the EDD problems since 2011. It’s like the DMV. They allow the EDD to keep driving down the road even with the wheels falling off.”